Chilliwack developer selling the farm experience

A new residential development in Chilliwack will include a working four-hectare farm complete with orchards, berry fields, vegetable gardens and farm market.

Owners of the 129 country-style homes on the site will be able to get their hands dirty — if they care to — planning, planting, harvesting and processing the farm’s produce with the help of a full-time groundskeeper/farmer.

Developer Steven Van Geel’s father Jon coined the term “recreational agriculture” for his idea to take the community garden concept built into the family’s recently completed vacation home project and turn it up a few notches by incorporating a working farm into a residential neighbourhood.

While large-scale developments have often been centred around amenties such as parks, lakes or golf courses, the Van Geels’ idea is a unique throwback to simpler times.

“We wanted to create a place where people could get back to their roots in a more meaningful way than just sharing a plot in a community garden,” said Van Geel. “This will be an interactive site where you can show the kids how things grow.”

Prospective buyer James Commerford is attracted to the country lifestyle for his wife Corey and their children, eight and 10 years of age.

“Getting the kids away from the city, they learn that they don’t need to be so busy, and getting involved in growing things is going to be great,” he said. “When we go out that way we like to stop at farms and pick up some apples, so I can see that for sure.”

An insurance broker by day, Commerford lacks the experience and expertise to run his own hobby farm.

“We don’t have to jump into running an acreage where you have to do a ton of work,” he said. And a full-time farmer is a perfect bridge over the knowledge gap.

“Having a farmer on the site will be great, and the gardens will be a focus for sharing and community gatherings,” he said. “The agricultural side is intriguing and I think it could take off.”

The community — Creekside Mills at Cultus Lake — occupies 15 hectares of the now-defunct 32-hectare Soutar family farm, part of which was under the protection of the Agricultural Land Reserve.

But Van Geel’s unusual development plan actually required an increase in the amount of land in the ALR.

To make the site work, 1.66 hectares of ALR land was excluded from the reserve for residences and 2.41 added in another location, for a net gain in protected land of about 45 per cent, he said. The four hectares in agricultural use are in the ALR and must remain so, under a restrictive covenant negotiated as part of the exclusion and rezoning process.

“A large part of the property has to be in agricultural use under that covenant, a lot of that will be berry fields and the orchard,” said Van Geel. “If some of the residents want to take some of that land and plant corn that will be up to them.”

The property’s shared facilities include a clubhouse, a barnlike structure with a kitchen suitable for gatherings or large-scale canning, baking, preserving and processing the farm’s fruit and vegetables for personal use or sale at the farm market.

“If people want to make pies or whatever for the farm market they can use that space,” said Van Geel. “If you just want to walk out into the orchard and pick an apple and that’s all you want to do, that’s fine too.”

The Van Geels’ project appears to be part of an emerging trend to integrate residential communities with agricultural uses.

Delta’s 950-home Southlands project is finally moving forward after a decades-long fight over the 1981 exclusion of the land from the ALR. The Century Group transferred ownership of 171 hectares — most of the former Spetifore farm — to Delta along with $9 million to improve the land for farm use. Delta intends develop a community farm on the site and return nearly 121 hectares of that property to the ALR.

Langley is home to High Point Estates, a so-called “equestrian community” of 164 properties with an elaborate equestrian centre, clubhouse, trails and barn for horses and their owners. Equestrian residential developments are common in many parts of the United States.

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Chilliwack developer selling the farm experience

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